Episode
Mission: Impossible: The Frame
Overview
Gangster Jack Wellman is moving syndicated crime into politics, killing off certain politicians and replacing them with men more sympathetic to the Syndicate. The team goes in as caterers. Cinnamon sneaks into Wellman's room, blows a hole in the wall, and inserts a fake safe. Meanwhile, Barney and Willy break into the real vault from the rear and steal the 4 million in profits that Wellman has tucked away, and which he is to split with his fellow mobsters at a dinner that night. They open the real vault and discover the money missing. Going upstairs, they find Cinnamon who claims to be Wellman's girlfriend, tells him she knew ""it"" wouldn't work, and reveals the fake safe. As Cinnamon and the rest of the team depart, the other mobsters tell Wellman to open the safe or they'll kill him, and don't believe his desperate pleas that he's never seen that safe before in his life.
Details
- Series
- Mission: Impossible
- Season
- Season 1
- Episode
- Episode 17
- Air date
- 1967-01-21
Episode context
The Frame is Episode 17 in Season 1 of Mission: Impossible. It aired on 1967-01-21.
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Episode 16: The Reluctant Dragon
Dr. Cherlotov, a scientist of an enemy power, failed to defect to the West when his wife did. Now that he has developed a cheap, effective anti-ballistic system, the IMF are ordered to get him out. Unfortunately, they find out that Cherlotov doesn't wasn't to defect: he merely wants to convince his superiors he is loyal and live out his life. The IMF smuggle in his wife Karen. Meanwhile, Rollin convinces Cherlotov's watcher and the security commissioner, Jankowski, to put Cherlotov under jail for suspicion. When Cherlotov realizes what his country does to other dissidents he agrees to defect, but Jankowski sees through Rollin's cover and tries to arrest them all.
Episode 18: The Trial
Josef Varsh plans to put an American on trial on false charges, discredit the West, and gain power. Rollin, disguised as Dan, meets with a woman who sold out her boyfriend/Western spy. Meanwhile, Briggs himself is with the Deputy Minister, a rival of Varsh's and a reformer. Rollin-as-Briggs leaves behind evidence implicating himself, and Varsh has the real Briggs arrested. Kudnov, who knows Dan is innocent, insists that Varsh let Briggs go, so Varsh orders him killed. The IMF team makes the Deputy Minister vanish - now they have to get the Deputy Minister and the girlfriend into court to testify and make Varsh look foolish.
More episodes from this season
Episode 15: The Legacy
The IMF must get hold of a horde of Nazi gold through four young men, sons of Hitler's top aides, who are sent to Switzerland to meet for the first time and pool their parts of the ""puzzle"" together. One of the men, the only one known to them, is replaced by Rollin. Each has part of an account number, and the team needs to hypnotize and trick the bank manager into giving them the complete account # and then slip it to Rollin. The bank account contains an envelope with a microdot, which when combined with a slide in each man's pocket watch provides the location of the treasure. After seeing the other men's slides, Rollin fakes the loss of his watch, then he and the rest of the team head to the cemetary. Two of the men figure out the puzzle from their pieces and follow. In a gunfight Dan is wounded, but one of the men is killed and the other runs off rather then face Rollin's wrath. The gold turns out to have been made into a crypt, and is recovered.
Episode 19: The Diamond
Henrik Durvard has taken over the country of Lombounda by military coup, and holds the natives in terror. He has obtained a diamond from the native miners, and the IMF are assigned to take it away from him. In London to auction the diamond, Durvard is approached by the team who offer to top all bids if they get exclusive rights to diamond production in Lombounda. Since Lombounda is not known for its diamond production, Durvard is suspicious. Eventually the team lets him figure out that they have a plan to use his country as a blind to distribute artificial diamonds that they claim they can manufacture. Durvard insists on being part of the scam, and forces the team to ""make"" a diamond from him using a piece off of the original stone. They do so, but when it comes time to fake the real diamond, the machine apparently overloads from the strain. The team slips the diamond out of the machine and leaves, as Durvard and the machine blow up.
Episode 14: The Short Tail Spy
A defector has been targeted by two rival groups from the same foreign country. The team is to discredit the younger group, so that the U.S. can more easily handle the old-line group. The IMF sets it up so that the younger group's assassin, Fetyukov, must seduce Cinnamon to get to the defector. The two play a dangerous romantic game, while Dan convinces the older group's assassin, Shtemenko, that Fetyukov betrayed him to the Americans. They then get pictures of him trying to assassinate the defector, and try to blackmail him to convince him further that Fetyukov is responsible. Cinnamon ""saves"" Fetyukov and convinces him that she wants to defect. As Fetyukov goes after the defector, it's up to Cinnamon to stop him.
Episode 20: The Legend
An imprisoned member of the Nazi party, Herbert Raynor, is released from prison and is being flown (along with his daughter) to Puerto Huberra in South America, along with other Nazis. All of them are being flown there by an unknown benefactor. Briggs and Cinnamon take the Raynors' place.They and the others are introduced to Martin Bormann, now a bedridden invalid. Borman's secretary, Rudd, informs them that Bormann will lead the Third Reich to new glories. Dan ducks a murder attempt, breaks into Bormann's room, and finds that he is a mannequin with a voice provided by Rudd. Rudd has recorded tapes duplicating Bormann's voice, and the last tape will turn leadership of the party over to him. To stymie Rudd, Rollin dresses up as Bormann and is suddenly not so bedridden. Of course, Rudd knows Rollin is an imposter but can't reveal it without exposing his own ploy. "Bormann" gives orders that eliminate Rudd once and for all and end the threat posed by the Nazis.
Episode 13: Elena
Double-agent Elena Del Barra is acting bizarrely, sending a microfilm of defense secrets from her own country. Rollin is sent into investigate, and return the microfilm without its theft ever being detected. Complicating matters is that an assassin, Callao, has been sent to kill her if Rollin can't figure things out in two days. Rollin convinces her to meet with teammate Dr. Enero, who hypnotizes her and learns she is suffering from a post-hypnotic suggestion to denounce the President, her good friend. With time running out, Rollin must return the microfilm, figure out the traitor, and save Elena.
Episode 21: Snowball in Hell
A former prison guard, Sefra, has got hold of a supply of cesium 138, which explodes at temperatures above 70 degrees. Sefra plans to sell the sample and the formula from the closed-down prison base where he once worked. Rollin and Barney go in as a photographer and model respectively, and Sefra ""learns"" that Barney is a former prisoner returning for revenge. The team fakes a generator break down while Sefra beats Barney, and the cesium starts to heat up. Sefra has it taken to a nearby hospital refrigerator, where the IMF makes the switch. When Sefra discovers the missing jar, he forces Barney to show him the escape route which he supposedly used to escape. As Sefra makes his own escape, the IMF send the cesium sample toward him on a remote-controlled mini-tank, and it blows up, killing Sefra and making sure no one gets the formula or the sample.
Episode 12: Fakeout
Anastas Poltroni is the head of an international narcotics syndicate, and has taken refuge in a country with no extradition treaty. The IM Force is assigned to lure him out without kidnapping him (to avoid the publicity). Cinnamon woos Carson until Briggs, pretending to be her husband, interrupts. Carson refuses to bribe Briggs, while Barney plants some of Carson's heroin in his own hotel room and tip off the police. The IMF ambush Carson and steal the heroin, and Carson later escapes. He grabs Cinnamon and follows Briggs to a deserted lodge to retrieve his own heroin. The police are hot on his trail, and he flees with Cinnamon still in his grasp. Thanks to confusing road signs altered by Barney, Carson ends up over the border where he is arrested and the heroin is taken into custody.
Episode 22: The Confession
Andreas Solowiechek, a member of a Communist trade delegation, is arrested after assassinating a U.S. Senator, Townsend. Townsend's backer, McMillan, is rallying his supporters for the U.S. to break off all trade talks with the Russians. It is believed Solowiechek wasn't working on the orders of his government, so the IMF team have to break him. Rollin becomes the assassin's cellmate, and arranges to be handcuffed to him. Rollin then fakes an escape, and threatens to kill Solowiechek. The assassin promises that his backer can Rollin money. Meanwhile, Dan has pretended to be an artist and got into McMillan's house, leaving a camera behind hidden in his art box. Rollin and Solowiechek confront McMillan, and the latter admits that he arranged for Townsend to be killed so as to become a martyr to his cause, unaware that his words are being transmitted on national TV.
Episode 11: Zubrovnik's Ghost
The wife of a deceased scientist, Kurt Zubrovnik, is being pressured by Eastern forces to work for them. They are using a phony psychic to convince the wife her dead husband wants to defect! Accompanied by IMF ""psychic consultant"" Ariana Domi, Rollin and Barney try to disrupt the fraud and convince her to return to working for the U.S. The psychic, Poljac, is torturing the husband for information to use to convince his wife Poljac's powers are real. Ariana senses a real ghost present. In the end, Rollin sets up a final seance and Barney prepares to use a technological projection of Zubrovnik to decry Poljac. However, a blackout causes his equipment to fail, and Ariana's alleged powers, plus some ghostly phenomena, allow them to complete their mission.
Episode 23: Action!
Miklos Klaar, an Iron Curtain filmmaker, has film of American soldiers and plans to edit it into an atrocity movie to discredit the U.S. He has recreated the jungle as a set from the one print of the film he has. Disguised as a Ministry of Propaganda officer, Rollin destroys the print and Barney floods the negative vault, forcing Klaar to reshoot the American footage as well. Cameraman and IMFer David Day is snuck in and films Klaar recreating the American footage. On the day the press is assembled, David and Willy manage to bypass Klaar's guards and air the footage of Klaar rehearsing his cast and crew and congratulating themselves on the phony massacre.